Beauty
by Flaignhan
Summary: She is now on par with him, because she can see it all too, and nothing can compare. [Ten Martha]


**A/N:** It's a very different style to my usual, the excess of 'and's isn't just me being dreadful at grammar, it's a terrible title, but I was dead stuck for one so I just chose it because it seemed to crop up a lot before I got my thesaurus out. Have not been able to sto writing Ten/Martha loveliness of late, for which I apologise, but there's not much I can do about it really. So, read, review, and enjoy!

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**Beauty.**

**by Flaignhan.**

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She opens the door to her flat and walks straight into the Tardis. She knows he's probably had about fifty goes at this perfect park before he's got it just right, but she doesn't say. She smiles, and he grins back, so obviously full of delight at seeing her. She could have had plans for this evening, but they both know that she never has plans. Her plans stretch as far as making her dinner at the right time so she can settle down for the mildly decent programmes on the television that evening.

The doors close automatically behind her and she doesn't bat an eyelid. She sets her bag down on the ground, leans her ring binder neatly against it and moves over to the console, eager to find out their destination. He doesn't start leaping around though, he looks at her, and she looks back, and they both move toward each other and share a hug, her nostrils filled with the smell of his aftershave, his own filled with the fruity scents of her shampoo.

The moment lasts for a short while, and then he's away, pushing buttons and pulling levers and twisting dials and pumping bicycle pumps and she's grinning as she watches him, like a child with an extortionate amount of new toys at Christmas but not sure which one should be played with first. There's buzzing and whirring and grinding and she's missed the noise, because it was always there, the hum of the Tardis was there for all that time, ever present throughout the universe, yet on Earth, in her little flat in North London, it's silent, and she can't stand the silence.

The machine finally comes to a halt and she manages to stay on her feet, used to the jolts and the shifts and the turbulence. He looks impressed but she shrugs it off, not wanting to value his opinion as much as she had previously. The hum is still there and she feels relaxed, like she's truly at home, and he holds out his hand, glancing towards the doors, curious as to what her reaction will be.

She takes it without even thinking, because there are some things she can't shrug off, and some things that just can't be ignored, not even just out of politeness alone. They leave the Tardis and a smile spreads its way across her face, lighting up her features, the energy that had been drained by her last hospital shift bursting forth, filling her with excitement and wonder and he's smiling too, even though he's seen it hundreds of times before and it's hardly new to his very old eyes, which is the reason he's concentrating on her, rather than the idyllic scene laid out before him.

The sky is still dark – it is the short time between night time and dawn, when one can tell the sun will start peeking over the horizon at any minute, the time in which nocturnal people all over the universe sit and watch for a few minutes, before unpausing their DVD or carrying on with their revision or rolling over and trying to get back to sleep. He closes the Tardis doors gently and they click into place. He starts to guide her up the grassy hill, ground squashy and damp with dew, wild flowers long since extinct in her time scattered all over the place, and she's sure that they died on the journey and went to heaven, because she's never seen anything like it.

She gasps when they reach the top of the hill and his smile just about manages to spread a little wider at her reaction and he knows he doesn't need to tell her it's Earth, knows that he doesn't need to tell her that they're in a time before humans began to build things and cut down trees and trample endangered plant life and hunt down just about every animal that couldn't afford to be hunted down. He knows because she's clever, and she can work it out for herself, and even if she couldn't, he doubted that she would appreciate his techno-babble at a moment like this, because such a place deserves to be peaceful and tranquil, and no matter how much power he has over the universe, how much he can change, he feels like he has no right to destroy the striking beauty of the place by opening his mouth, so he stays quiet, his hand holding hers, looking out over the horizon as the first golden rays of sun begin to spread.

She doesn't want to ruin it either. She wouldn't be able to if she tried, because she's completely and utterly speechless, and she wants no answers, no explanations, no small talk, nothing. Just the sound of a small waterfall nearby, hidden by leaves of the brightest green and flowers so vivid that they might blind her, and the faint sounds of small creatures in the distance, a gentle breeze sending a rustle through the foliage and it's just like the Tardis, because there's noise and yet there's not. There's enough so she can't hear the blood pounding in her eardrums, or the creak of her neck when she turns her head in another direction, but there's not so much that she would be easily distracted by it.

Her face falls and he knows why. Her world is so grey and dull and drained and _boring_, and she's wishing she could have had this. He knows she would give up her mobile and her laptop and her iPod in an instant if she could live her life in a place like this. He knows exactly how she feels, because he's felt it so many times before, and so he squeezes her hand a little tighter and she squeezes back. She's trying to process it all but she can't, she cannot comprehend how much beauty there can be in one place, when all her life, the definition of beauty has always been a woman with perfect hair and white teeth, and yet no woman could ever draw away the eye of even the most shallow man from the sight that she is currently beholding. She doesn't know what to do, because even though it's so close to home, it's so _far away_ from home and she can't stand the knowledge that this will be gone, ripped up and torn to pieces so cities and towns and villages can be built, so people can live amongst concrete, rather than beauty, and she feels _ashamed_ because it's her people that have done that, it's humans that have destroyed it all.

She understands why he doesn't like them. He keeps it to himself, mostly, but even though he loves them all unconditionally, he is disgusted with them, because he can see everything that has long since gone, and only he can ever fully appreciate the downward spiral in which the Earth is caught up, but now she can too and she wonders whether she is being punished for being human, or whether she is being rewarded because she tries to preserve. It may be the lives of ordinary people that she tries to preserve, but it's still _some_ form of preservation, because she can't bring back what's long since lost, just like she can't bring back the dead, but she tries, and she knows he is proud of her and in awe of her at the same time for doing so.

Either way, she is now on par with him, because she can see it all too, and nothing can compare, nothing he has shown her previously could ever hope to compete with what he has shown her this morning. She feels as though he is admitting her into a special club, that only she and he are members of, because she knows he has shown no one else this, that she alone amongst all humans of all time will see the unrivalled magnificence of the land which stretches out in front of her, the sun halfway past the horizon, drenching everything in a warm orange glow and she can feel the heat soaking through her jacket; even his hands are starting to become warm and she knows it's not just her own body heat being transferred.

They wait and watch the sun rise high into the sky, neither saying a word, no muscles moving, not even by a fraction of an inch, and although she was hungry and thirsty when she got in from work, it doesn't matter; she doesn't feel it because it's so stupid to want for anything when all you could ever possibly want is just surrounding you, three hundred and sixty degrees of perfection, and although she would never say it aloud, she knows she has perfection standing next to her too. She knows he's completely imperfect, but at times like this the imperfections are twisted around and she's not irritated, but ecstatic, and she wants to kick herself for even considering him at a time like this, but it's impossible not to. She has the feel of his hand in hers memorised down to the pressure of his fingertips and the small patterns he traces with his thumb. She knows exactly where her head rests on his shoulder when he hugs her and knows without a doubt how he smells at different times of the day. She wishes more than anything that she didn't, because he doesn't have the foggiest about her hands or her hugs or her smells, and it's a complete waste of time even thinking about his, yet she can't help herself, because he's given her all of this, and more. She's spent around a year with him and a year without, and then she's spent a good few years being Doctor Jones, but never, in all the years of her life (and it pains her to realise that the number's over twenty five now) has she treasured any moments more than she has treasured the ones with him.

He finally speaks and it's completely the wrong time because he's filling up her head already and he shouldn't be taking up even more of her attention, however unwittingly he does it. It's completely the wrong thing to say but it's also the right thing to say and she wishes she wasn't given a choice. "You could wake up to this sunrise every day, you know. And every night you could see it set, and the stars are like jewels on velvet in the darkness and it's _stunning_."

She knows what he's asking, and her mind's screaming at her to take him up on his offer and never set foot in her flat again, then the other half is reasoning, rather pathetically, that she waited her whole life to be a doctor so she shouldn't be throwing it away after only doing the job for a few years. There are other doctors in the world, though, and the most important one in the universe is standing next to her, offering her the chance of a lifetime – a chance she's been given time and time again, and yet he's never stopped asking. There's always been one more trip to be had, or an event that she just _has_ to see, and she's turned him down plenty of times, but now she doesn't think she could.

She knows that there can be too much of a good thing, and so she turns away, back towards the Tardis, his hand still in hers. He walks alongside her but stops after a few steps, hand up in the air to silence her, a grin on his face that is so childlike and innocent that nine hundred years just seem to disappear in an instant. "Can you feel it?" he asks, his teeth gleaming brightly in the morning sun. She stands stock still and concentrates harder than she can remember doing in any medical exam, and it's there, just for a millisecond. She turns to the Doctor, a quizzical look resting on her features.

"What is it?" she breathes. He looks even more delighted because he knows that she felt it, even if only for the briefest moment in a time which history forgot.

"It's the turn of the Earth."

She says yes, because she feels that this is some sort of rite of passage, that feeling the Earth moving beneath her feet is a sign that she cannot just go back to London, where she is unable to feel peaceful, let alone the turn of the Earth. He cannot make his grin spread anymore, but he breathes a sigh of relief instead and opens the door of the Tardis, stepping aside so she can go in first.

He takes her jacket from her and hangs it over one of the rails, before he turns to her, giving her his full attention and asking her where she wants to go next.

She wants to see the sunset.

**The End.**


End file.
